Investigating Femicide in Mexico

Mexico has one of the world’s worst rates of femicide, with some ten women on average killed each day.  While the authorities claim they have a high success rate in prosecuting such cases, investigative journalists supported by IWPR have revealed that this is far from the truth.

They found that in less than one per cent of the femicides were the killers brought to justice, convicted and sentenced to the minimum number of years established by local laws for such a crime.

Claims of success in bringing the killers to justice was widely due to miscategorisation; when the real data was analysed, the numbers were found to be very low.

The three part investigation by Animal Politico also revealed how the authorities consistently minimised femicides, not least in terms of judicial processes.

Most killers walk free, and in the few cases in which a conviction was secured the courts demonstrated extreme lenience. For example, in some cases they claimed that the victim had granted forgiveness to their victims; in at least three cases the journalists documented this was applied in instances in which the victims had been killed.

The journalists also reported flagrant irregularities in the processes. Some judges freed the suspected killers alleging that the statute of limitations had expired, which was evidently not true since by law this is set at 30 years for those crimes. In other cases, the killer was sentenced to jail for just between six months to one year.

Part of the series looked at how for 12 years officials had failed to follow up suspicions of a serial murderer who is thought to have killed at least six women in Mexico City.

Another story supported by IWPR explored the misuse of funds for a system to protect women victims of violence in Mexico.

All the investigations were produced last year under IWPR’s Consortium to Support Independent Journalism in the Latin American Region project, known as CAPIR, which provided journalists with training, financial resources, mentorship and networking.

IWPR supported 15 teams across Latin America to strengthen their investigative reporting and demonstrate the power of in-depth journalism to hold authorities to account.